I originally set up this blog to showcase the old Dope Rider comic strips I occasionally did for High Times from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s. With High Times' 40th anniversary issue in 2014, I restarted the strip and have been doing my best to get one done for each issue. A few months after they appear in the magazine, I will archive them here. Note: all images are copyrighted by Paul Kirchner.

If you'd like to purchase Dope Rider merchandise, visit my Dope Rider Store at CafePress.com and click on a design you like. Your patronage is most appreciated!

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

My book Awaiting the Collapse has just been published by Tanibis Editions, in both French and English. I just got my shipment of English-language copies today. It is a hardcover book, 152 pages, measuring 9.75" x 12.5". As always, Tanibis has produced a magnificent volume with fine attention to detail.

The book contains all my old Dope Riders, plus the one I did for High Times' 40th anniversary issue that got the series restarted. Altogether 41 pages of Dope Rider, the art fully restored and recolored. Episodes that were published in black and white have been colored for this anthology.

Also in the book are the best of my Screw covers, some of my Heavy Metal stories, and a previously unpublished story I did a few years ago.

Also a lengthy afterword by me attempting to explain my life and work.

You can buy a signed copy of the book from me through Amazon or you may buy it directly from me for $32, post-paid. I'll try to spam-proof my email address: pkirchner [aa tt] comcast [dd oo tt] net. (If I get a torrent of spam I'll know this didn't work.)

Friday, November 24, 2017

My French publisher, Tanibis Editions, has just put out an anthology of my work titled Awaiting the Collapse. It contains all my old Dope Rider episodes from the 1970s through 1980s, fully restored and recolored, as well as other artwork from that period. In order that there not be any blank pages, I did some spot illustrations, among them five Dope Rider drawings. At the time I was completing this work I was also in the process of moving out of my house and it was difficult to keep up with the monthly strip for High Times, so I used the five spot drawings to make the one page comic below. The following month I was not able to meet my deadline--I had no studio set up--so there's an issue of High Times missing a Dope Rider (I think the October issue), but since then I'm back on schedule.

I had been wanting to do a Dope Rider homage to Yellow Submarine for quite some time and finally got around to it. By the way, while researching the film I learned two things that surprised me: (a) the artwork was not done by Peter Max, the great 1960s psychedelic artist, but by Heinz Edelmann, a German illustrator and designer, and (b) the Beatles did not do the voiceover dialogue in the movie--it was done by actors imitating their voices.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

I visited the Peterson automobile museum in Los Angeles recently. A standout exhibit for me was "El Muertorider," a 1968 Chevrolet Impala painted in Day of the Dead imagery by artists John Jota Leaños and Artemio Rodriguez. I wanted to share my photos here.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

My wife took this picture of me as I was working on my next Dope Rider. It's a plastic model skull I put together back in the 1970s and I have been referring to it ever since when I draw the Lone Stoner.